AT&T today released WorkBench, an Enterprise App for the iPhone (and perhaps the iPod and iPad as well) developed with Antenna Software which will allow IT departments to more easily build secure Web Apps for Apple's mobile devices..
WorkBench, according to AT&T, will allow businesses to easily provision, deploy and control enterprise web applications for work in a highly-secure, reliable and manageable fashion.
The core uses for WorkBench are:
- Role-based deployment of web applications.
- Enhanced IT controls for web applications such as policy management, mobile VPN, over-the-air updates and remote data lock/wipe.
- Certificate-based authentication using SCEP (Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol), which is aligned with iPhone's over-the-air enrollment and configuration process. Ability to run multiple enterprise web applications simultaneously and toggle instantly between active web applications.
- Enables employees to work with their critical data and applications offline and automatically update when they reconnect to the network.
In a nutshell, it looks like AT&T is creating a separate, secure Web browser (with all types of controls and offline access) for accessing enterprise apps remotely.
You can read more on AT&T's press release here.